1.16.2008

Can't not want

When I was living in Portland the first time, during college, shopping in the city was often lackluster at best. Shopping for anything, really, it just wasn't fun. No little districts that hadn't been trounced through before, nothing new to discover. It was either smelly hippie head shops on Hawthorne or the prohibitively expensive boutiques of NW 23rd. Those few times a year I found myself flush with an extra $100, I was hard-pressed to find somewhere to spend it. One weekend, my friend Jenny and I made a sojourn to the outlet mall in Troutdale, Oregon. We hit the road with visions of wonderful discounts and fantastic finds. But soon after a driving tour of the parking lot, past Dress Barn and Bass shoes, we were a little let down. Though my kitchen didn't need a thing, I followed Jenny into Mikasa to see if there was anything worth bringing back home.

I'm not a big fan of yellow. When I wear it I look sickly and though it's the number one color to paint a kitchen, I don't think it has a lot of business being around food. At least that's what I believed for a long time. But then I saw them. The yellow dishes. They were a nice, modern bright set of yellow dishes that just said happy. They looked like the perfect way to start a morning. I could see the bright yolks of an egg over easy picking up the color of the dishes. Cheerios would live up to their namesake in a cheery yellow bowl. For no good reason, I loved them.

But I didn't buy them. I thought what I thought was better of it and didn't take home the set. I had dishes. Fine, functional white ones that did their job with little fanfare. An entire set of yellow dishes wasn't something I needed, they were just something I wanted.

But there's something to be said for want, because even after I left, I was thinking about them. I would look them up online to see if they were available. I might have even visited another Mikasa to admit I made a mistake, that I shouldn't have left them. But I never found them again. Later I picked up a couple of sweet yellow bowls with a French cereal logo on them, and I like them a lot. But I know it's not the same.

But these dishes, they taught me a lesson. There's nothing wrong with wanting. With listening to that little voice inside you that for no good reasons says, "Go on. Get them. If you love them, you should have them." I'm not saying indulge every impulse. That would be ridiculous (and pricey), but there's something to be said for surrounding yourself with little thing that make you happy. Make you smile. For no good reason at all.

So why now? Why the yellow dish story? Simple. I have a lot of blogs I keep up on. Some of them food-based, some design based. And some that bridge the gap between the two. I came across these on notcot today, and I got that feeling. The feeling that having these little guys in the kitchen would make me smile, give me a little joy. I'm not one for kitch or for cute. Though I have two cats I don't own anything with a cat on it. I look at cuteoverload a few times a day, but I don't go further than that. Still, these geese measuring cups want to be mine. And for the price, they just might have to be.

That is, unless some charitable reader wants to buy them for me first.

They're over at Anthropologie.com. In the home section. A nice place to browse, as it happens.